It will be fantastic and challenging to teach Utahns that there’s more to being a conservative than just selecting “R” at the top of the ballot.

@Mike S

I’d recommend that printed materials be translated into a dialect I’ll term “Middle-Aged Armchair Conservative Utahn” (MAACU). You know the demographic – gets all of their news from “Family Values” Talk Radio, has Limbaugh or Hannity on all day throughout the house (and listens to KSL, but doesn’t like Doug Wright because he’s “too liberal”), stopped reading the newspaper and watching television because “the media is just so liberal these days,” and who knows who all of the good guys and bad guys in Washington are, but not a single non-euphemistic name for a bill of legislation. The MAACU isn’t a conservative in any sense of the word, but has a small set of selectively-applied political principles to drag out every time a conveniently packaged lightweight controversy pops out of the media pipeline. In short, they’re painfully aware of the birth control controversy and wary of Obama’s origins, though they’re not particularly concerned about habeas corpus, drone attacks overseas, corruption in UDOT and the consequences of the drug war.

But communicating with this good-natured, but misguided and casually ideological demographic will not be easy! Libertarianism as a philosophy has been marginalized and swept under the rug both because the “powers that be” (and I mean this in a very realistic and not conspiratorial sense) don’t benefit much from its prevalence, because libertarian principles take more time to communicate than ten-second soundbites afford, and because it’s so easy to cynically condemn libertarians as weak peaceniks, lovers of drugs and legalized prostitution, and traitors.

I’d like to suggest the following template, which incorporates some of the MAACU rambling and anecdotal way of speaking and dealing with facts into a template which encourages more principle-minded thinking:

“Reading the BOM it’s amazing that their society didn’t fall faster than it did-

Because ours is sure on the downward slope…

Like the Nephites we have become a warlike people and treat each other like animals…

Having raised three children, I’ve had my share of protests that I am not treating my children fairly-

LOL!

But sending kids to bed without dessert is quite a bit different from killing people without habeas corpus…

If as the scripted say we are all “Children of God” then we might want to consider turning the other cheek with the Muslim world and being a good neighbor…

But I suppose I’m just being old-fashioned…

I’m definitely being a little cynical and humorous here, but I do truly believe that most modern political analysis actually centered around principle is a little too insulatory and intellectual to really be appreciated by those who don’t already subscribe to that political stripe. Glenn Greenwald, for example, one of the biggest crusaders for human rights and what Utahns ought to consider a “Christlike” foreign policy, may as well be speaking Martian for all of the impact his words have on the unconverted. The solution may involve more accessible, punchy writing that hits people in the same place as the political writing they’re already listening to.

If we can find a way to translate habeas corpus, pacifism, human rights and ending political corruption into the same space currently occupied by jingoism, ignorance, paranoia, and partisan demagoguery, then we may really be getting somewhere.

I wish you the best of luck with Libertas Institute.

Heaven knows you are right about the need for local freedom organizations.

I only hope that some of us are able to follow your lead here in Idaho.

You should be able to get lots of corporate funding for this effort since your goals are right in line with those of the corporate special interests that dominate our political system. They too want citizens to put property rights above human rights, to put individual self-interest above the needs of the community, state and nation, and above all to subordinate democracy to the religion of “free market” capitalism.

looks good; good posts–

I’m not in the Utah ‘world’, far from it, but the MAACU sound like many in our ward far from the Mormon Corridor–

Connor, you aim high; it’s impressive.